I loved Patty's post on Negative space (and am saving it).....and bing! One
of my negative space lessons popped into my head. Sorry Patty...I DID read
what you said, honest.
The first year I had seventh and eighth grade both, I had them do the same
lesson once to save me time. We did contour figure drawings with fine point
black markers (ones that would bleed slightly). They drew their figure one
size - then I used old technology to make it different sizes (photocpied
them). They created an interesting composition overlapping these figures -
then transferred them to watercolor paper. Figures were outlined with the
marker - contours and cross contours (Flairs maybe?). We put beautiful
watercolor wet in wet washes in the negative spaces...Kids got it then. The
figures were their positive shapes (left white fo the paper) and the
colorful background was their negative shapes. The original intent was to
cut the drawing in half then weave the two halves together....but I didn't
like my sample that way so left them as drawings/paintings... That was the
year I found out who Tiger Woods was. I have other lessons where we did
things to the negative space so they knew what was the negative space and
what was the positive space. We always tried to make our negative space
interesting, too. (Positive and negative space was talked about in all
assignments). What I know they would never be able to get is a lesson I had
in college. I could get it -but I can imagine it being super difficult for
kids. We had to just draw the negative spaces - not the positive -but the
shapes around the objects. That would have been a nightmare to teach my kids
(middlers or high school).

Betty - I hope you can have a positive negative space experience for the
rest of the week. Enjoy!